Monday, July 6, 2009

Today wasn't exactly the Passage de Gois stage or even the cobbled stage from 04 when Mayo crashed out, but it was the first oh fuck moment for a handful of contenders. The one common denominator between those older stages and today, is Armstrong being in the right place at the right time. Retirement hasn't affected that aspect of his performance. Conspiracy theories will abound tonight and tomorrow-did George let Lance know? Was it planned? Is there an alliance(is this Survivor or the TDF?) Did Contador really just lose a wheel and open a gap-a gap he couldn't close or wouldn't close? Can't wait to run the theories through babble-fish in the morning.Contador should remember the words of Fausto Coppi, "Old age and treachery will overcome youth and skill"Anyway you cut it, this is a lot of drama for the third day.

The TTT should be interesting tomorrow. Without the Max 2:30 rule, teams could get knocked pretty hard with time that will be hard to get back. How can you not pick Astana? High Road and Saxobank are my next picks with Garmin in 4th-as JV's twitterized shaming fails to get them in gear.It is shorter(38K) than previous editions(67K in 05,64K in 04, 69K in 03), but more technical so maybe the difficulty will be more of an issue than the length. On the longer TTT courses, a quarter of the teams would forfeit over 3 minutes to the winner! So hopefully for them reducing the length will reduce the deficits their leaders have to recoverEither way this tour is starting out right. Punch Ups, Echelons, Drama.